Taylor Woodrow team mentor students to success

Students from Notting Hill & Ealing High School won the ‘Contribution to the Business’ Award at the Engineering Education Scheme’s recent Celebration Assessment Day. The group was mentored for six months by one Network Rail and five Taylor Woodrow employees.

The students took on a real-world engineering task to carry out a BREEAM pre-assessment on plans to develop the train station at Southall, and to try and improve its rating within a budget of £100,000.

Since October 2016, the mentors have met weekly with the students to help them research ideas. They have found ways of improving the station’s pre-assessment score from ‘Pass’ (41.6%) to ‘Excellent’ (73.01%).

The students’ work was so good that our team challenged them to pitch their ideas to Crossrail. Crossrail were impressed with what they saw and plan to take some of the ideas such as the proposed Building Management System forward for use.

The scheme helps develop key skills such as innovation, team-working and creativity in the context of the world of work. Notting Hill and Ealing High School Acting Head of Physics Joshua Schneider said:“Our students gained the unique privilege of working with professional engineers on a project affecting the lives of everyone in the community, presenting their ideas at the Crossrail offices, and actually seeing the prospect of seeing their ideas being put into action, which would not have been possible without Taylor Woodrow’s support through the Engineering Education Scheme.”